This invention relates to packages, and is more particularly directed to packages for take out and/or delivery of pizzas, dessert pies, and the like. The invention is more particularly concerned with a thermally insulated disposable container for pizzas or other food items to be served hot (or cold), the container being constructed substantially entirely as a unitary sheet of styrene foam or another food compatible plastic foam material.
The conventional means of packaging pizzas, bakery products, or the like for take out or for home delivery is a cardboard box of square or rectangular shape. These conventional pizza boxes have to be folded up in advance of preparing the pizzas, so that the boxes will be ready when the pizzas are hot. The pizza box blanks usually come in packages of one hundred or two hundred per bundle, and generally an employee will assemble the entire bundle at one time so that the boxes are ready for customers. Therefore, significant space in the pizza restaurant must be dedicated to the assembly of these boxes, and additional space set aside for the storing of the assembled boxes. A standard lot of one hundred assembled pizza boxes form approximately three stacks from floor to ceiling.
The standard carboard pizza box also has a number of drawbacks. For one thing, cardboard containers have a low insulation coefficient, and the cardboard tends to weaken as it moistens. If it is attempted to reheat the pizza in the box in a microwave oven, the cardboard will become soggy. The pizza box will also become soggy if frozen pizzas are thawed while in the box. Also, cardboard harbors bacteria, which can fluorish in it, causing possible health and spoilage problems. In addition, paper dust and cardboard shavings often remain in the cardboard box, and these can mix in with the pizza crust or toppings. Moreover, odors tend to migrate through a cardboard container so that food items stored in the vicinity of a box with uneaten pizza slices will often tend to pick up the flavors and odors of the pizza.
Still further, because the pizza boxes are generally square, whereas the pizzas themselves are generally round, a large amount of space in the box is filled with air rather than with pizza, and thus accelerates the cooling of the pizza between the time of preparation and the time of delivery to a customer. The square box shape also permits shifting of the pizza during delivery, and can permit the pizza crust to flex and bend so that the sauce, cheese or other topping separates from the crust.
Because the moist crust and topping of a pizza can soak the cardboard of the standard container, deli paper or butcher paper is usually required. This is especially so if the pizza is sliced into wedges while in the box, rather than before placing it in the box, as often occurs during restaurant busy hours.
Further still, if wedges of different types of pizza are placed in the same box, or, if pie wedges of different types of dessert pies are placed in the same box, the toppings or fillings tend to run together. Also, because of the shape of standard bakery and pizza boxes, the pizza slices or dessert wedges tend to shift around in the box and contact and damage one another.